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Chapter 26

Jason

♪Broken | Lund

Ityped in my text and heard the ping from across the store.

Jason:You’re so fucked. One word: pleather.

Sloan:How do you feel about taxidermy?

Jason:How do you feel about the 70s?

A Talking Heads song played in the background, and I looked over the racks of the musty Santa Monica thrift store. Sloan glanced up at me from across the room and narrowed her eyes. I beamed back at her.

She’d had Zane drop me off at Goodwill so she could challenge me to a game on our date night. We each got fifteen dollars to buy something the other person had to wear for the rest of the evening. It was actually a pretty hilarious idea. But when I heard Sloan laugh all the way across the store, I knew it wasn’t going to end well for me.

“Your bravery is about to be tested,” she said outside ten minutes later. She was adorable.

“Nothing scares me.”

“Really? I think this might scare you,” she said, pulling out a long red cape with little tacos on it and holding it out by the corners.

I ran my hand through my hair and she laughed.

“Okay. It’s a cape. I can do a cape,” I said, a laugh in my throat. “I’m man enough.”

“I tend to agree with you on that.”

“Your turn.” I’d hit comedy gold in there. I pulled out a footie pajama with a unicorn head for a hood. It even had a tail. She blanched and I started cracking up.

“Do I have to wear the hood?” she asked.

“Absolutely. And the belt.” I produced a wrestling championship belt made of gold plastic.

She made a face. “Fine. But I’m not done with you,” she said. “Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you’re this famous guy”—she made jazz hands—“and you can’t get photographed walking around the Santa Monica Pier in this. That it would be bad for your image and Pia would lecture you and blah blah blah. But I want you to know I’ve made arrangements for this because I’m a very thoughtful girlfriend.”

She turned away from me and put something on. When she turned back around, I howled with laughter. She wore flesh-colored plastic sunglasses that looked like hands over her eyes. There were gaps between the fingers to see through.

We both laughed so hard we were crying, and I grabbed her and pulled her into my chest.

I couldn’t live without this. I wanted her to come on tour with me.

I didn’t care what I had to do to make it happen—pay her bills, bribe Kristen for support. Beg her.

I was still waiting to hear back from Ernie on whether we could get Lola off the ticket before I talked to Sloan about it. But whichever way it went, I already had a plan to see her when I was on the road. If she couldn’t go with me or visit because of Lola, I’d come to her as much as possible. And there was the five-week break for the holidays. We’d talk on the phone and we’d Skype. We’d done the phone thing before. We were good on the phone. We could do it again.

We put on our outfits. Sloan’s needed some altering. We borrowed scissors from the thrift store and cut the feet off so she could wear her shoes. She said it was hot, so we cut the arms off too.

“There,” she said, unzipping the front and pushing her boobs up, the crooked horn on her hood bouncing. “Sexy unicorn.”

I looked at her through the plastic fingers of my new sunglasses. “Are you satisfied with yourself? Look what you’ve done to us.”

“I am satisfied, thank you.” She cocked her head at me triumphantly.

“You’re nuts, you know that, right?”

“You’re nuts too.” She slipped her hands around my waist and hugged me, looking up at me with her chin to my chest. “Oh! We have to take a picture and send it to your mom.”